Category: John Christopher

Sam Youd was born in Lancashire in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm.

As a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: ‘In the early thirties,’ he later wrote, ‘we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.’

Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies …

Five people enter the Frohnberg caves, three men and two women. In the glare of the Austrian sunshine, the cool underground depths seem an attractive proposition – until the collapse of a cave wall blocks their return to the outside world. Faced with an unexplored warren of tunnels and caves …

A disparate group of Londoners are brought together by Sweeney, a mysteriously charismatic man of wealth, for a luxury cruise in the South Pacific – they know not why. Sailing far from the normal shipping routes, the ship weighs anchor just off an uninhabited tropical island…

As The Independent’s Invisible Ink article put it, was there ever an author with so many pseudonyms? With its third publication, The SYLE Press turns its attention from the Hilary Ford novels to those of...

Dublin to Dieppe to Amsterdam. A routine trip for the cargo ship Kreya, her Danish crew and handful of passengers. Brief enough for undercurrents to remain below the surface and secrets to stay buried…

John Christopher (also the author of SARNIA and A BRIDE FOR BEDIVERE) resumes his account of the writing of THE LOTUS CAVES. First published in 1969, republished on November 4th this year by Simon &...

In 1971, two years after its publication, John Christopher (alias Hilary Ford, alias Sam Youd) published an article in the children’s magazine ‘Puffin Post’ to explain his reasons for writing THE LOTUS CAVES — recently...

John Christopher’s science-fiction novels for young adults, in particular the Tripods series, have long been considered classics of their genre. In recognition of their ongoing appeal, Simon & Schuster, who have published the Tripods books...